Friday, September 28, 2012

The University of Michigan shows us how tuberculosis works. It's not that surprising, and could be summed up with "diseases spread," but it's still somehow entrancing, and sad. Maybe it's her voice? Grandma Sally got locked up in the TB San when John was a baby and that's all I know about that. [via]

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Grandma Kitty died of TB when my dad was very young. This was back in the early 50s before antibiotics really arrived on the scene. Her brother, my great-uncle, is still with us; he was treated via plombage, where they collapsed the lung in an effort to allow it to heal. You can still see the Lucite balls in his lung on x-rays.

It's so strange, isn't it? TB and polio were scourges in this country less than a lifetime ago. The medicine I take to keep my kidney transplant healthy was discovered when I was two. I have high hopes that I'll be around to see entire organs custom-grown in the lab.

@j-i-a PS about that modern-day sanatorium, it's a hospital room with a contained air circuit that you can only be broken for explicit medical necessity (like when I ordered egg sandwiches every hour on the hour which cost my worker's comp case approximately $90000 probably)

@j-i-a If I can ask (and please feel free to tell me to MYOB, I'm nosy), how long did you have to spend in isolation? Was it just a few days so the antibiotics could kick in, or was it a long-haul, "you have to test negative at least three times" thing? I work in outpatient at a hospital and there's a tension between what infection control thinks is optimal and what you can and should actually ask people to do.

@area@twitter I have no conception of MYOB so ain't no thing: I think the standard is 21 days after you start taking medication? I left earlier though. I had a negative smear (but a positive culture and blood test) so they thought the infection was locked up in my lymph system/probably non-contagious, and also I was a difficult patient (cried every time my doctors came in and ordered 90000 egg sandwiches), so I persuaded them to let me out after 7 days if I promised I'd wear a face mask and not leave my house. But by then, the spaceship was coming back for me so a little boy wrapped me up in a blanket and put me on his bicycle etc etc

My grandmother was sent to a TB San in 1939 (when she was 7)! My mother and her have actually been doing a lot of research into the TB hospital and the history of sanatoriums in general lately - it's interesting (and sad) stuff.

Ever since learning about TB in nursing school and the wonderful book "Mountains beyond Mountains" (seriously, read it!), I will never look at cottage cheese the same way again. These granuloma harden into tough little cysts in your lungs, and the inner consistency is always compared to that of cottage cheese.

Aughh this is so timely. I am getting a TB test next week because I am totally convinced that my flat mate, who moved out yesterday, had TB. I heard him cough like crazy for a year, and then he got a girlfriend and she started too!!

I got pneumonia a few years ago when I was working in the Middle East, and was in the hospital for about a week. Anyway, when I was first getting admitted to the hospital, they did a chest X-ray, and then the doctor came to see me and the first thing he said was, "Good news, it doesn't look like TB!" and my reaction was "WTF JC I HADN'T REALIZED THAT WAS A POSSIBILITY!!"